The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1887-01-06
STRANGE STORIES.
some Remarkable Tales Which Travellers
Have Brought Back With Them.

some Remarkable Tales Which Travellers
Have Brought Back With Them.
Captain Lancaster many years age
told of wonderful plant he found on
the sea sands of an island in the East
Indies. He said he found the shore
covered with small twigs growing up
like young trees. When he tried to
pull them up he was astonished to find
that they shrank down to the ground,
and even sank out of sight unless he
held on very hard. In the course of
time Mr.. Darwin examined the wonder
full products of nature which Captain
Lancaster had discovered. He found
that the supposed plant did not belong
to the vegetable kingdom, but was a
species of the animals known as 20.
ophytes or sea-pens. cat low water"
he wrote, hundreds of zoophytes
might be seen ejecting like stubble.
When touched or pulled they suddenly
drew themselves in with force, so as
nearly or quite to disappear.
Besides the travellers who wilfully or
ignorantly distort facts there are not a
few who could journey around the world
without being able to tell much worth
hearing of their travels. Awhile ago a
man who had travelled good deal in
the western Pacific was asked to de-
scribe the Solomon Islands. All he
could say was that the water there was
very blue; that the bathing was excel.
lent, and that he saw many lovely sites
for villa residences. 1t was learned
that he had long been a real estate
agent in Melbourne.
Mr.. Romily says that few years
ago traveller who was addressing an
audience in England, which included
many scientific men, solemnly assured
them that the natives of New Britain
mended broken legs by inserting a
piece of tortoise shell into the bone.
The shell was neatly fitted into a
groove that was cut in the bone, and
the ends of the broken bone were in
this manner kept together. HIS hear
ers never thought of questioning his
veracity, when he surprised them fur
Their by asserting that the science of
dentistry was far advanced in New
Britain. He said the natives made
beautiful teeth of mother-of-pearl,
which they attached to the jaw by fine
threads of sinnet. Later visitors to
New Britain have failed to find any
evidence of these accomplishments.
One of the funniest stories that ever
gained wide circulation was that about
the bone-eating trees of the Louisade
archipelago. The story ran that dur
ing the night the branches of these
trees bent to the ground. and that the
leaves, like those of the fly-catching
plants, closed about all bits of bone
or flesh that they happened to touch.
Before morning all traces of the bones
and meat had disappeared, the trees
having completely assimilated them.
The natives worshiped them as deities
and placed offerings of bones and flesh
near them to appease their appetites.
This story was doubtless derived from
the fact that many of the Pacific ISL
anders place thousands of bones in the
crotches of trees, and in the process of
growth many of these become Embedded
in the wood, like the horseshoe which
has SO long been on exhibition in a
Nassau street window.
The imaginative element is largely
developed in most savages, and they
are always happy to entertain their
white visitors with wonderful stories,
some of which are afterward repeated
in civilized lands as solemn facts.
There are many sailors who believe to
this day that there is tribe in central
New Guinea which is adorned with
tails. Some of the natives of the
southwest coast are willing to swear
by all their gods that they have seen
men from the interior, of whose an
atomy tails are a natural and highly
ornamental feature. The sailors think
they ought to know. Jack Tar has
also circulated that other interesting
yarn from New Guinea to the effect
that some of the natives bore holes
through their left hands to fire arrows
through them.
Newspaper editors, as well as states
men, sometimes make curious blund-
ders on account of their limited ac-
quaintance with out-of-the-way parts
of the world. Awhile ago some En-
glishmen were killedin one of the New
Hebrides islands. An Australian news
paper, in burst of indignation, adj
vised that gunboat lying in the har-
Dor be sent to draw a Gordon around
the island, drive all the natives into
the interior. and there exterminate
them. The gunboat force available for
this purpose was sixty men. The island
happens to be forty miles long and ten
miles wide. A mountain range about
four thousand feet high runs through it
and it has fighting force of at least
one thousand men. Ii the sixty Aus.
tralians had tried to form the proposed
Gordon they would probably have made
bad mess of it.-N Y. Suu.